Miniature strips of lights (called strip lighting) are a convenient solution to providing low level safety lighting in special situations. These liggts are especially good for illuminating alcoves, bookshelves, highlighting pictures or walls or, if bright enough, task lighting and such like. Commercially available strip lighting is normally comprised of a strip of incandescent miniature light bulbs. Each of these light bulbs is normally connected in parallel to a common power supply which supplies 110 volts to the bulbs. In some cases a lower voltage of 12 to 24 volts dc or ac is supplied to the bulbs. The strips are normally available in long lengths that can be cut to the required number of bulbs, to suit a particular situation.
Incandescent bulbs have the disadvantage o being relatively inefficient for any required wattage or luminosity. A large percentage of power supplied to incandescent bulbs is generated as heat. Therefore to supply a given power to a string of light bulbs, one needs a relatively bulky power supply due to the inefficiency of the incandescent bulbs. Another disadvantage of incandescent light bulbs is that the life span is fairly short, and this requires bulbs to be changed at fairly regular intervals. Any housing or covering around the strip lighting has to be easily removable in order to access the light bulbs. This adversely effects the compactness of any housing design. The addition of extra light bulbs at a later stage will also require considerable increase in power supply output. In a specific case of a domestic or like stairway it is desirable to illuminate a stair riser under the lip of the stair tread so as to make the riser and tread visible in the dark, but at the same time the strip light must be physically unobtrusive. Commercially available strip lighting suffer from the disadvantages, mentioned above, therefore these lights are not entirely suited to this specific application. It is preferable in a strip light for use in stair cases to have a long life, be compact and be supplied from a low voltage power source which is inherently safe. The light should also be easily installed, by the average homeowner, with minimal requirements for tools.